The Escape

Rob had wondered why the estate agent insisted on them seeing the flat in the morning despite Rob asking for an afternoon appointment. Now he knew. He felt like a prisoner in his own home. The flat was great, just what he was looking for, compact and bijou, all mod cons, perfect for an up and coming young bachelor around town that Rob thought himself to be but the street, well let's just say the street was ‘interesting’.

When he’d seen the flat, the street had reminded him of the opening sequence of Mister Benn, a kids’ TV show from the 70’s; a quaint urban street, a few kids and old folk around but basically a perfect place. But if it was quaint in the morning, by teatime it was anything but. For reasons that were not immediately obvious the street was the preferred meeting point of all the teenaged boys of the neighbourhood, spitting, swearing, swinging-low and strutting they swarmed the street playing tinny music from their phones and talking in tongues. Every evening as Rob walked home he felt youths watching his every step, like he was Mr Benn and the teenagers the viewing public.

But worse was to come, when the teens got dragged in by the ears by their mums, (dads were thin on the ground), they were replaced by the whores, hundreds of them out in the open with their evil looking minders in the shadows. The street was full of slow moving vehicles, crawling kerbs. From his window Rob could see the hollow looks in the girls' eyes, frightened scared young girls and broken, resigned older women competing for  ‘clients’ so they could pay for their next ‘painkillers’.

Rob picked up his contract and looked it over again and again hoping for some escape clause, some way out, but there was no trial period and the notice period was 3 months; could he live with three months of this? He’d hardly survived three days.

He wondered if he had a legal leg to stand on, surely the agency had lied when they’d said quiet, residential street. But any legal battle would take months and Rob wasn’t sure he could last that long. There was nothing else for it; he would have to do a midnight flit. Not at midnight of course, the street was too dangerous at midnight, and the slow drivers would complain about a van blocking their path, no it would be an early morning flit but Rob would certainly flit.